Yarrr... the sea be a cruel mistress

Casting a line into water and pulling out something creepy and delicious has long been a favourite activity of mine. We figured the Pacific ocean might be just big enough to afford us that opportunity here in NZ. So we woke up Saturday at dawn or a little before and moseyed across the street to the Tauranga wharfs to get on a boat with Tim and kill us some sea life.

$190 NZ later we were on a boat, outfitted with poles and all the squid we could want, and motoring across a placid harbour. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sun and only a few rain clouds receding in the distance. After a brief stop to pick up more passengers at Mt. Maunganui, we—roughly twenty souls—pulled away from the wharfs to seek our glory.

As we rounded the mountain to exit the harbour, a statue of a Maori warrior knelt as if to lay a fern leaf at our feet. The Maori welcome visitors to their marae by placing a fern leaf at the visitors' feet after performing a ritual resembling a haka. If you are a friend, you will pick up the fern leaf and carry it with you, being careful not to break it or let it touch the ground. So too was this Maori statue welcoming us to the open ocean, or perhaps it was to greet us on our return.

As we left the calm of the harbour, Tim remarked at how placid the ocean was. With swells of a meter to a meter and a half, our fishing boat slowly made its way toward the island of Motiti, which we could see in the distance.

Our first fishing stop was approximately thirty minutes from the Mount, and that's when Roni and I had our first realisation that the ocean was not at all like the various rivers and lakes that we were used to. Yes, the constant heaving of the ocean—mild though it was—had made us both violently ill.

My first thought was to curse my parents. Couldn't they have taken us to the ocean once as children so that we could have maybe developed some kind of tolerance to sea sickness?

"Don't worry," said Tim. "Everybody gets sea sick at some point, even veterans. I knew a guy who has been sailing since..." I looked over and saw a kiwi leaned over the railing. Okay, it wasn't just the Montanans.

You'd think that at some point you'll get over it, but you don't. We had booked an all day excursion and that's roughly how long we were sick. Roni took the opportunity to head below deck and get some sleep. Her body had had enough. I took the "stare at the horizon" approach. I think she faired slightly better, but she missed more. Tim tells me that you don't even feel meter and a half swells in a sail boat because a sail boat has a keel. Note to self: be on a sail boat next time.

I wasn't in much of a condition to cut up baby squid and feed them on a hook. No, I wasn't squeamish about the squid or the fish smell—simply focussing my eyes on anything closer than the horizon caused intense nausea. I didn't feel too bad about not getting to fish, however, because almost nobody was catching anything of legal size. People were mostly hauling in baby snapper, removing hooks from them, and throwing them back. And that's a fine spectator sport.

We moved around to a few more spots and people mostly had the same luck: bad. Toward the end of the day, we had positioned ourselves in a spot where most of the swells had died down. Miraculously, my sea sickness subsided. Equally as miraculously, larger fish started biting.

I took that opportunity to pick up my previously unused rod, cut up some squid, and put them on the hooks. Wham. Baby snapper. Oh well, toss him back. Rinse, spin, and repeat a few times. Hey, this feels a bit bigger. Ooh a keeper. Not huge, but a respectable snapper. Excellent.

Tim had some good luck. He caught a kahawai, which had to be bled in order to keep its taste, and three snapper. While it didn't seem like a huge haul of fish, Tim didn't really want a bunch of fish anyway, and we certainly weren't in a position to prepare them where we were staying. So, in the end, we had just the right amount of fish: enough for Tim to cook a little snapper and smoke the rest. Despite Roni and I periodically chumming the waters, the poor guy fishing next to me didn't catch a single legally sized fish—and he was fishing the whole day.

Aside from the snapper and kahawai, we caught and saw all kinds of other interesting fish. One fellow caught a large eel, which was very interesting. Another caught a blue shark that was simply stunning. I caught a number of scorpion fish and a couple of (too small) blue cod. The scorpion fish are gorgeous. They have every shade of neon red and orange you can imagine. They also look rather spiny.

I'm glad that my evolutionary senses kicked in, however, and that the colour and spines prompted me to use a rag to handle the fish. While I had no problems handling the snapper and avoiding their razor sharp spines, apparently the scorpion fish are venomous. I don't know how venomous, but I'm just as glad that I didn't have to worry about a venomous sting on top of sea sickness.

After catching a few more small fish, the swells started to pick back up and I was done for the day. Fortunately, we headed back in shortly thereafter. Roni came back up from her nap below deck, got sick again, and together we eagerly anticipated solid ground on the ride back.

Once on ground, we found that, in fact, the ground does pitch and roll for a while. After a shower and a bit of a rest, we felt well enough to go find some food. After a very heavy, cheesy Italian dinner we retreated to our room for the night.